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A software development company is building a new microservices application in Azure. Each microservice needs to securely communicate with other services and Azure resources (e.g., Azure Key Vault, Azure SQL Database) without managing credentials in code. The security team mandates that the identity for each service should be managed by Azure AD and automatically rotated. Which Azure AD feature should be used to assign identities to these microservices?
- AService Principals
- BManaged Identities
- CUser-assigned Identities
- DApplication Registrations
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Managed Identities
Managed Identities for Azure resources provide an automatically managed identity in Azure AD for Azure services. This eliminates the need for developers to manage credentials, as Azure handles the identity lifecycle and credential rotation, making it ideal for secure service-to-service communication.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Service Principals are representations of applications/services in Azure AD, but Managed Identities build upon them to provide automatic credential management.
- C. User-assigned identities are a type of managed identity, but the broad concept is 'Managed Identities' which covers both system-assigned and user-assigned, solving the core problem.
- D. Application Registrations define an application's identity in Azure AD, but they still require manual credential management (client secrets/certificates) for service applications.
Managed Identities for Azure Resources
A feature of Azure Active Directory that provides an automatically managed identity for Azure resources, allowing them to authenticate to services that support Azure AD authentication without developers managing credentials.
- Eliminates credential management in code
- Identities automatically managed by Azure AD
- Supports both system-assigned and user-assigned types
Memory trick: MANAGED Identities handle secrets for you.